d exposure was so great.

As he pondered over the two stories Colwyn did not attempt to shut his
eyes to the fact that Hazel, on her own showing, fitted into the crime
more completely than Nepcote. She had ample opportunities to slip into
the room and murder the woman who had supplanted her. She had really
strengthened the case against herself by the damaging admission that she
had sought Mrs. Heredith's room in secret just before the crime was
committed. Her explanation of the scream and the shot was so improbable
as to sound incredible. It was not to be wondered that Scotland Yard
preferred to believe that it was the apparition of the frantic girl,
revolver in hand, which had caused her affrighted victim to utter one
wild scream before the shot was fired which ended her life.

But Colwyn had never allowed himself to be swayed too much by
circumstance. Appearances were not always a safe guide in the
complicated tangle of human affairs. Things were forever happening which
left experience wide-eyed with astonishment. The contradictions of human
nature persisted in all human acts. In this moat-house mystery, the
grimmest paradox of his brilliant career, Colwyn was determined not to
accept the presumption of the facts until he had satisfied himself that
no other interpretation was possible. His subtle mind had been
challenged by a finger-post of doubt in the written evidence; a
finger-post so faint as to be passed unnoticed by other eyes, but
sufficiently warning to his clearer vision to cause him to pause midway
in the broad track of circumstantial evidence and look around him for a
concealed path.

It was the point he had mentioned to Caldew at his chambers after
reading the copy of the coroner's depositions which Merrington had lent
him. While perusing them he had been struck by a curious fact. The
medical evidence stated that the cause of death was a small punctured
wound not larger than a threepenny piece, but added the information that
the hole in the gown of the dead woman was much larger, about the
diameter of a half-crown. The Government pathologist had formed the
opinion that the revolver must have been held very close to the body to
account for the larger scorched hole. That inference was obvious, but
Colwyn saw more in the two holes than that. It seemed to him that the
live ring of flame caused by the close-range shot must have been
extinguished by the murderer, or it would have continued to smoulder and
exp